Archive for August 17th, 2018

17 August 2018 (Sputnik)* – The Peruvian Authorities are reportedly going to start barring Venezuelan migrants from entering the country unless they have passports, the government sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday [16 August 2018].

According to Reuters, the measure aims to curb a surge in immigration from economic crisis-hit Venezuela that has already driven hundreds of thousands of desperate migrants to Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Chile and Brazil.

Shortages of food and medicine, exacerbated by hyperinflation, have reportedly forced more than a million Venezuelans to flee to neighboring nations such as Ecuador, Colombia and Peru in recent months.

IAEA/Gill Tudor | Rubble from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant caused by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

16 August 2018 – A group of United Nations rights experts are urging the Japanese government to urgently protect tens of thousands or workers hired to help decontaminate the Fukushima nuclear plant, who are reportedly being exploited and exposed to toxic nuclear radiation.

“Workers hired to decontaminate Fukushima reportedly include migrant workers, asylum seekers and people who are homeless,” said the three UN Special Rapporteurs.

16 August 2018 – A lack of funds means that the new school term for over half a million Palestinian students could be cut short after just one month, says UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees.

UNRWA

The agency’s 711 schools, providing free basic education for Palestinian refugee children in the West Bank – including East Jerusalem – Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria – will open as planned in September.

UNRWA operations have been hit hard by the United States decision at the beginning of the year to cut back its funding of the Agency by around $300 million.

The Republika Srpska National Assembly in Bosnia and Herzegovina drew concern from the top United Nations expert on the Prevention of Genocide on Thursday 16 August 2018, over its decision this week to revoke its endorsement of the 2004 Srebrenica Commission Report acknowledging genocide during the Bosnian war of the 1990s.

UNICEF/Roger Lemoyne | A boy rests against a woman in a camp of people displaced from Srebrenica, at the Tuzla airport in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1995.

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“Rejection of the Commission’s findings is a step backwards for Bosnia and Herzegovina,” said Special Adviser Adama Dieng.

“It undermines the rule of law and national and international efforts to achieve justice for victims of crimes committed against people of all ethnicities during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war,” he continued.